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PRINCIPLES IN THE DETERMINATION OF 

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BY 

ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM 
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Colgate University 


REPRINTED FROM 

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 

Vol. VII, No. 4 (April, 1919) 



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AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 
BROADWAY AT 156th STREET 
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THE 

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


VOL. VII 


April, 1919 


No. 4 


PRINCIPLES IN THE DETERMINATION OF BOUNDARIES* 

By ALBERT PERRY BRIGHAM 

Colgate University- 


Three Stages of Civilization 

The Tribal Stage 


The student of boundaries must take account of a threefold evolution, 
marking a primitive, or tribal, stage, in which such lines do not exist; a 
mixed, or transitional, stage, in which demarcations are shifting but gradu¬ 
ally embrace all regions of the world; and a third, or ideal, stage, in which 
they become in great part fixed and at the same time of diminished impor¬ 
tance save for convenience of administration. We are now in the second 
stage, and some would deny that the third condition can ever become 
effective. 

In the hunter-nomadic type of world economy there is room enough; 
tribes grow up in their own centers, with more or less clash in their wander¬ 
ings; but frontier problems do not press, and the limits of ownership are 
vague. Such boundaries as existed in early times were without plan or 
consciousness on the part of the groups that were separated. The world 
was comparatively empty. Groups expanded in regions where hunting, 
fishing, pasture, and simple tillage were favored. Over the mountain ridge, 
beyond a belt of desert, or across a lake or salt sea were other assemblages 
of men. There were no maps, no surveys, and no boundary lines; there 
were only separating zones. As put by Professor Lyde, the frontier was the 
farthest region from which the tribe could get food . * 1 It was the domain 
of self-sufficiency for an embryo nation. 

Another English writer sees a vivid picture of the hunter expanding his 
radius, meeting others expanding their radii and becoming man hunters, 
the ancestors of the warrior nobles of the Middle Ages and of the Renais- 

* Read at the fourteenth annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Baltimore, 
December 27-28,1918. 

1 L. W. Lyde: Types of Political Frontiers in Europe, Geogr. Joum., Vol. 45,1915, pp. 126-145. 


Copyright, 1919, by the American Geographical Society oj New York 







202 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


sance, down to the imperialists of the present day . 2 In the war from 
which we have now passed is evidence that primitive conditions have kept 
a stubborn grip on a changing world. 

The Transitional Stage 

The second stage shows developed civilizations and high densities of 
population in large parts of the world, with primitive or semi-civilized 
peoples elsewhere. Frontiers of the modern and definite kind abound in 
more advanced regions, which shade off into penumbras of spheres of 
interest, spheres of influence, protectorates, and buffer states. In so far 
as less-developed lands are held as colonial property, as in Africa, demarca¬ 
tions are as essential as in Europe. 

Boundaries as we know them, as the schoolboy learns them, strict lines 
of separation, are therefore features of maturing civilization, with grow¬ 
ing densities and increasing pressure on natural resources. They have 
in the past been commonly put as far out from the center of the group 
or nation concerned as its numbers and needs required, or as far as the 
ambitions and the power of its rulers made possible. During many 
centuries boundaries have been laid down in treaties, and treaties have 
been, in the main, the expression of power, power to get and power to 
prevent an enemy from getting. 

The Ideal Stage 

The final stage, to which we look, offers a world full of autonomous 
nations, all fitted for self-government and fitted to live in amity with their 
neighbors to mutual profit. Self-restraint as a mark of national policy is 
a development of our own times. Nations are learning the futility of 
Alsace-Lorraine experiments in boundary shifting. Many boundary dis¬ 
putes which in earlier times would have been settled by conflict have in 
the last hundred years been peacefully adjudicated. 

We are approaching, or we should like to think we are approaching, 
the time when national limits are to be set for equal welfare on both sides 
of the line, when considerations of defense and of aggression fall out of 
sight, and justice is the only goal—justice involving the administrative 
convenience, reasonable self-sufficiency, and economic co-operation of na¬ 
tional groups. So far as this ideal is reached, a line across a plain may 
be as good as a mountain range, the forty-ninth parallel as useful as the 
Pyrenees. Under such ideal conditions international lines would be little 
more than our bounds of states, counties, and towns—they tell us where to 
vote, where to pay our taxes and record our mortgages, and who will build 
roads for us, police us, and otherwise carry out our will in the various 
spheres of government. As state and civic pride still abounds, we need 
not fear that patriotism will die. 

2 Patrick Geddes: Boundaries and Frontiers. Westminster Rev., Vol. 169,1908, pp. 257-260; reference on 
p. 257. 



PRINCIPLES IN BOUNDARY MAKING 


203 


Thus we meet the question of today: How far have we passed out of the 
tooth-and-claw stage of humafi relations? Have we even touched a dim, 
outer zone of the millennium? If victory had rested with the enemy we 
well know on what principles boundaries would have been drawn. Victory 
being where it is, just and rational boundaries, we may safely hope, will 
safeguard peace in our time. Here, then, is our point of departure for a 
summary of the principles which control the fixing of boundary lines. 

Two Opposing Theories of Boundaries 

Two opposing types of view have been set forth by British geographers 
during the past four years. These authorities are Colonel Sir Thomas 
Holdich and Professor L. W. Lyde, and their conclusions are developed in 
several published volumes and in a series of essays appearing in the 
Geographical Journal, the Scottish Geographical Magazine, and the Nine¬ 
teenth Century. 

Holdich’ s View: The Defensive Function of Boundaries 

Sir Thomas Holdich is recognized as pre-eminent among those who have 
had actual and long experience in boundary demarcation. He is a soldier 
and represents distinctly the military and defensive conception of the func¬ 
tion of boundaries. It is his deep and unalterable conviction that signs of 
international good will are not frequent enough to warrant boundary fixing 
“which would lead to the mingling together of the human fringes of the 
nations .” 3 But if the fringes are already entangled we are at liberty to 
ask what we can do about it. It is indeed fair to remind ourselves at this 
point that Holdich is contesting Lyde’s view that boundaries should of set 
purpose be put where population is dense and where people are forced to 
meet one another. Man being “a fighting animal, he must be prevented 
from physical interference with his neighbor by physical means. ... A 
boundary must be a barrier.” Ergo, if there be no barrier, we must rely 
on armament and fighting—a rather hopeless outlook. Yet Holdich admits 
the need of considering first the sentimental values in a boundary dispute; 
but he returns—and who, after England’s four years, will wonder ?—to the 
conclusion that “security means armament,” an artificial protection if no 
natural defense is possible. No rosy hopes of millenniums should blot out 
the lesson of tears and blood. Of all barriers, mountains are “incomparably 
the best. ’ ’ Holdich often recurs to the Himalayas and the Andes, but most 
of the world, and most of the people of the world, are not on the two sides 
of the Andes or the Himalayas; and the Alps, the Carpathians, and the 
Pyrenees fall far short of supplying high fences for Europe’s dense and 
diverse millions. Failing high mountains, Holdich comes to common divides 
and water partings. These indeed are determinable and, for human periods, 
reasonably stable; but are they defensive ? 


3 T. H. Holdich: Political Boundaries, Scottish Geogr. Mag., Vol. 32,1916, pp. 497-507. 



204 


THE GEOGEAPHICAL KEVIEW 


Recognizing that small elevations are more common than Pyrenees, our 
author reverts to the defensive value of hills, supplemented by forts and 
trenches, and thus practically surrenders his major contention for natural 
ring fences and falls back upon the primitive method of keeping the world 
in some kind of order. These admissions are hardly consistent with the 
opinion that “ there are but few wide spaces existing in the world where 
some adaptable features of natural topography are not to be found ready 
to his (the boundary maker’s) hand.” On the other hand, one may freely 
ask where, in the thousands of miles of Eurasian plain that stretch from the 
Pyrenees to Vladivostok, can a boundary expert trace around any nation 
11 a sound, defensible line ’ ’ within which it ‘ ‘ may find peace and security. ’ ’ 
We may well fear that a doctrine of natural encirclements will delude us 
with empty hope; and, in default of international good will, send us along 
the rough road of recurrent war and patched-up peace. 

Lyde’s Theory of Assimilative Boundaries 

Professor Lyde approaches the subject from the point of view of the 
human geographer and brings to bear upon it his wide knowledge of the 
historical, racial, linguistic, and economic relations of human groups. No¬ 
where are his views more compactly expounded than in his essay on ‘ ‘ River 
Frontiers in Europe.” 4 He refers to Holdich’s then recent paper before 
the British Association as setting forth a purely military doctrine of 
frontiers, as if war were the normal state of man. If a mountain barrier 
is far better than all others, then a boundary is good, not as it promotes, 
but as it prevents intercourse. A boundary must on the other hand be 
an international feature; it must be obvious, indisputable, a promoter of 
relations in peace and a barrier in war. Lyde cites the Plate, long a frontier 
line but never a source of friction as regards the countries bordering it. 
Civilization is ‘ * progress in the art of living together, 1 ’ and the world long 
ago became an economic unit. It is the navigable river which encourages 
11 a maximum of peaceful tendencies. ’ ’ As to the defensive value of rivers, 
the case of the Danube is cited as having defended Belgrade for four 
months, in 1914, in the second Austrian attack. It is of course easy to 
remind ourselves of what happened to Belgrade at a later stage of the war. 
Many rivers of Russia are cited as having protected the great retreat, 
especially those rivers which had no marshy bordering plains but did have 
parallel railways behind them, a combination which “gives a defensive 
position of enormous strength.” Such a barrier may be as good as a 
mountain range, especially as mountains often have an arc form or a steeper 
front on one side than on the other, thus destroying the defensive equi¬ 
librium as between the two sides. Mountains having failed to keep enemies 
apart in the sad past, why put large faith in them now ? 

Rivers favor cultural and linguistic assimilation and the incoming of 


4 Scottish Geoor. Mag., Vol. 32,1916, pp. 545-555. 



PRINCIPLES IN BOUNDARY MAKING 


205 


outside ideas and of international tendencies. “We want the two nations 
to be unified in all except political allegiance.” The frontier embodies a 
formal contract which commercial communities, common on rivers, are 
more likely to respect than are nomad highlanders. Lyde’s closing sentence 
in this paper has the tone of prophetic warning. “If the new map of 
Europe is based on piurely military lines, Europe will have to expiate it— 
once more—on purely military lines.” 

Such are the alternatives offered. On the one hand nations may not 
trust each other and must have defensible borders. Such defenses are 
hard to find and, when found, must be supplemented by artificial con¬ 
structions and armies. All being done, the best defensive arrangements 
are likely to be neutralized by destructive modern invention. On the 
other hand is the hope, more or less theoretical and academic, promulgated 
by a university professor, that nations will live together in reasonable amity, 
assimilating themselves to each other, preferably across the narrow waters 
of a river. 


Physical Geography and “Scientific Boundaries ,, 

Those who follow Holdich make much use of the phrase “scientific 
boundaries.” We may inquire whether there are such boundaries, seek¬ 
ing thus to know what the words really mean. We suppose natural features 
are intended, which man seizes for his purpose; and this purpose is assumed 
to be division and to involve separation and defensibility, as viewed from 
both sides. There are four commonly recognized kinds: mountains and 
water partings in general; deserts j seas; and rivers. Of all these we may 
say that they show infinite diversity, irregularity, and confusion in magni¬ 
tude and in form and that they offer a limited assortment of sharply defined, 
unmistakable, and unchanging divisions. 

Mountains 

Mountain ranges do not commonly offer single, commanding ridges, but 
break into components running in rough parallelism, or at various angles, 
with intricate and sometimes elaborately trellised systems of drainage, 
developing on maturing mountain fields of , the Appalachian type. The 
Jura, lying between France and Switzerland, is a pertinent example. 
Water partings are far from meeting elementary notions of roof like separa¬ 
tion and show vague cols joining the opposite slopes of a plateau, or the 
uncertain and shifting sources of streams in vast glacial marshes. 

Deserts 

Perhaps the best historic example of desert boundaries is found in 
Egypt. Here for thousands of years was a densely peopled area, shut off 
on three sides by an arid wilderness and- on a fourth by a sea which knew no 
developed art of navigation. Yet Egypt managed to fight and to be fought, 


206 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


in spite of her natural seclusion. Now we carry millions of soldiers in 
ships, run a railway across the Sinaitic desert, and mark the aerial passage 
of a schoolmaster from the Holy Land to the Nile in fewer hours than it 
took decades for the Hebrews to go in the opposite direction. The near 
future holds railways across the Sahara and over the arid wastes of Aus¬ 
tralia, while express trains have long crossed the Great American Desert 
from the Rio Grande to the Saskatchewan. 

Seas 

Seas have been regarded as efficient boundaries of the “scientific” 
order. The American red man was long safe from pale-faced conquerors 
through the fending power of the Atlantic; but Roman and Carthaginian 
were getting marine practice in effective military crossings of the Mediter¬ 
ranean, and the Strait of Gibraltar did not save the Iberian Peninsula from 
centuries of African rule. America now yields her claim to isolation as 
never before in her history and is beginning to recognize that the jingo 
myths of some American school histories, rather than the Atlantic Ocean, 
separated the United States from the mother country. 

Rivers 

Under the influence of the old, defensive ideals, geographers have not 
thought that rivers were good boundaries. People on the opposite slopes 
and flood plains of a river valley tend to meet and to engage in like activi¬ 
ties. A river is indeed a military obstacle, and armies have sacrificed 
thousands of men in the present war in seizing bridgeheads necessary to 
their advance. George has pointed out that a river is always a weak spot 
in the communications of an invading army. 5 One does not quite under¬ 
stand Lyde’s contention that a river backed by a railroad is a strong de¬ 
fense, in view of the range and power of the artillery which may be as¬ 
sembled on the opposite bank. Other objections to rivers as international 
borders offer themselves. Some rivers disappear seasonally, or they shift 
their courses, or their waters are withdrawn for irrigation. Public works 
of large variety belong to river courses, and the people of both banks must 
be equally interested in their control. Water rights must be established 
in relation to domestic supply, pollution, industrial power, and navigation. 
Bridges, cables, and ferries are to be added to the catalogue of a river ’s be¬ 
longings. All these things involve and imply intimate and friendly rela¬ 
tions. 

But, however we urge the limitations of rivers, we cannot rule them out 
if assimilative boundaries are to have significance in the future. Indeed, 
if we go back to the defensive idea, we must still use rivers in Europe, 
because they have some value and are far more numerous and available 
as dividers than any other class of natural features. 


5 H. B. George: The Relations of Geography and History, Oxford, 1901, p. 30. 



PRINCIPLES IN BOUNDARY MAKING 


207 


Niagara Falls, a name marking two communities, one in Canada and the 
other in the United States, is an example of several of the problems named 
above, and it may be urged that they have been amicably solved. But the 
forty-ninth parallel has been as good a divide as Niagara River or the 
Great Lakes, and the same reason may be affirmed in relation to both—a 
decently disposed people lived on each side of the line. 

Lakes are related to rivers as they are to seas, when viewed as boundaries. 
Marshes offer a belt, like the desert. They are like the desert in being hard 
to cross; but they present a different sort of difficulty in crossing and in 
some future time may be reclaimed, deforested, and provided with roads. 


World Survey of Physical Boundaries 

The Americas 

Light is thrown on our problem by the most cursory inspection of the 
world map. The northern boundary of the United States begins in the east 
with the ragged outline of Maine, which projects far north into the basin of 
the St. Lawrence River and historically represents geographic ignorance, 
was settled by a series of painful negotiations, and violates all notions of 
a scientific boundary. The line through the upper St. Lawrence and the 
Great Lakes is a natural line until the north shore of Lake Superior is 
reached, where it leads off through a tangle of lakes and marshes to the 
Lake of the Woods. Thence the forty-ninth parallel is used, and we have 
the authority of Holdich for the badness of straight lines, as being expen¬ 
sive to determine and mark and as paying no heed to topography or human 
choice. 

The last objection has little value here, since the line was originally run 
through an uninhabited region. The first objection has this support, that 
the line as marked diverges in places as much as 2,000 feet from the astro¬ 
nomical position. 

The southern Alaskan frontier is cast through a tangle of high mountains 
and is widely held to be unjust to Canada, in that it shuts off an enormous 
Canadian hinterland from direct access to the sea. Sufficient reference has 
already been made to the Rio Grande, and the remainder of the Mexican 
boundary is wholly arbitrary. North America is assuredly poor in bounda¬ 
ries of military or separative value. 

The same is to be said on the whole of South America. Brazil is bor¬ 
dered by ten political units, of which seven are autonomous nations and 
three are colonial possessions governed from Europe. On the side of the 
three colonies the line follows the water parting. Sections of rivers form 
part of the lines toward Paraguay and Uruguay. We think of Brazil as the 
country of the Amazon, yet vast areas of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and 
Bolivia reach over into the mazes of the Amazon forest. 

The southern stretch of the Andes nearly led Chile and Argentina into 


208 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


a boundary war, which was averted by reference to a British commission, 
of which Sir Thomas Holdich was a member. The line was by treaty to 
follow the heights of the range. Investigation in an unmapped region 
showed that the water partings were well eastward of the line of main 
crests. Hence the problem; the solution kept the peace but is in no way 
scientific. If we follow the view that rivers are not desirable as boundaries, 
then the middle Andes, shutting off northern Argentina from northern 
Chile, are the only good international boundary in South America. 

Africa and Asia 

Africa tells the same story, if possible in stronger fashion. Because the 
continent has little in the way of sustained mountain ranges and is bor¬ 
dered by a smooth shore line, the available features are rivers, lakes, and 
deserts. The greatest African rivers function to a small degree in this 
field; the Niger not at all, the Nile but slightly, the main stream of the 
Congo only in a part of its lower course. The Zambezi, Limpopo, Vaal, and 
Orange Rivers serve only as between British dependencies, assuming that 
German Southwest Africa will pass to permanent British control. The 
great African lakes play a part comparable, in the future it may be, to the 
international functions of our own Great Lakes. Egypt has already been 
considered. No African country can rest its security upon physical 
boundaries. 

Before we come to Europe, there remains Asia. Asia, in the large, is a 
central highland with a lowland fringe. Central Asia is a barrier in itself, 
mountain and lofty plateau, deserts of rock and snow, deserts of aridity. 
Northern India, on the southern edge of this great core, has, in the separa¬ 
tist view, the finest boundary in the world, yet nowhere has British nervous¬ 
ness been more fully exhibited, and nowhere have we such an outfit of 
spheres of influence, protectorates, and buffer states as here. 

The Amur, the Mekong, and the upper Oxus are the main examples of 
river boundaries. Recent history is sufficient commentary on the physical 
security of Manchuria, with Russian influence reaching across a great 
river and Japan seeking protection and grasping for power across the sea. 
The plains of Mesopotamia are shut off from the world by deserts and moun¬ 
tains. and they have been the football of military powers from the dawn of 
history to the twentieth century. Writers upon Palestine divide their em¬ 
phasis between the isolation of the little land and its historic place on the 
highroads that for thousands of years have joined three continents. It is a 
long way from the armies of Assyria and Egypt to the crusades and the 
British victories of the past year. 

Historical Survey of Physical Boundaries in Europe 

So far the map does not speak loudly for the protective value of scientific 
boundaries. We pass to observe the type examples of Europe. Here, 


PRINCIPLES IN BOUNDARY MAKING 


209 


if anywhere, we shall find demonstrative evidence that physical features 
are in high degree divisive and defensive. 

The Pyrenees 

“In Europe the Pyrenees form perhaps the most typical example of an 
effective mountain barrier .... they stand as they have stood for ages 
as the parting line between two Latin nations which so far have shown no 
tendency towards mutual assimilation or desire for cultural unity.” This 
is the judgment of Holdich ; 6 but the facts are not historically so simple as 
here asserted. Not taking account of earlier Phenician, Greek, and Cartha¬ 
ginian interests, the Iberian Peninsula, save for a brief Frankish invasion, 
was all under Roman sway down to the first barbarian incursion about 
400 A.D. Since that time the peninsula, with a clean boundary on the crest 
of the Pyrenees, has been under one sovereignty only for a period of about 
half a century. During the invasions there was a Visigothic kingdom which 
extended far over the Pyrenees and generally reached to the Rhone valley. 
About 600 A.D. the range formed a clear boundary between the Frankish 
and the Visigothic kingdoms, but half a century later the Visigothic sover¬ 
eignty again approximated the Rhone delta. 

The Saracen attempt to bestride the Pyrenees was less successful, but even 
the blow dealt by Charles Martel at Tours did not end the Moslem am¬ 
bition to get a foothold north of the mountains. Charlemagne held the 
Spanish March, and, as he came to his end, his strong hand reached across 
the Pyrenees as far as Barcelona and a stretch of the upper Ebro. At the 
time of the First Crusade, 1100 A.D., Navarre and Aragon were small 
states along the range, and the Kingdom of France included the Mediterra¬ 
nean shore line as far as Barcelona. In the fourteenth century the Pyrenees 
became the essential boundary, but there were minor fluctuations until the 
middle of the seventeenth century. It is to the purpose to observe that 
Napoleon put a large army into Spain and was baffled of his aim not by the 
“scientific” wall of the Pyrenees but by the fires of European resentment 
which determined to crush him and free the world from the menace of uni¬ 
versal dominion. The human spirit rose, as it has risen today, and dwarfed 
all physical conditions. 

The Alps 

Granting that the Pyrenees are one of the best of protective boundaries/ 
the Alps confessedly offer poor support to this type of view. This is widely 
recognized. “The Alps have not isolated like the Pyrenees.” 7 “It was 
the fashion in Roman times to speak of the Alps as the rampart of Italy. 
They have at all times proved a singularly ineffectual one . . . Goths and 
Huns, Lombards and Franks, Holy Roman Emperors, French Kings, Na- 


6 T. H. Holdich: Political Frontiers and Boundary Making, London, 1916, p. 150. 

7 L. W. Lyde, article cited in footnote 1, p. 130. 




210 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


poleonic and Austrian armies have swarmed over their ridges. The Alpine 
passes have served as the neck of an hourglass; the human sand runs 
through them easily either way.” 8 To the same purpose Dominian quotes 
the lines of Cowper— 

Mountains interposed 
Make enemies of nations who had else 
Like kindred drops been mingled into one 

and observes that ‘‘the passes of the Alps refute the poet’s statement. 
Their uniting functions eventually overcame their estranging power.” 9 
Popular notions emphasize the unity and physical aloofness of Italy, shut 
into her peninsula and fended from icy winds by her towering Alps. Yet 
Italy has fought a bloody war to free herself from the threat of Trentino 
and the menace of natural naval fortresses on the farther side of the Adri¬ 
atic Sea. The history of two thousand years does not here lend much sup¬ 
port to the barrier theory. 

The Alps were crossed by the armies of Hannibal, and the conquests of 
Caesar and his successors wiped them out as a barrier. Odoacer, a German 
barbarian, established in 476 a kingdom astride the Alps reaching from 
Sicily nearly to the Danube. The Ostrogoths overthrew Odoacer and still 
more completely ignored the mountains, pushing their frontier to. the south 
bank of the Danube. The Lombards, also German in race, next occupied 
the Alps and pushed their sway almost to the end of the peninsula. Charle¬ 
magne ’s empire reached from the North Sea beyond Rome. The First 
Crusade saw the empire equally extended in the south. By 1360, when the 
empire was much broken, it still reached over a part of the Alpine range 
as far as Tuscany. In 1549 the Swiss Confederation took its place among 
the mountain heights, whence it has never been dislodged. In Napoleon’s 
time it became a part of the Confederation of the Rhine but came forth in 
the reconstruction of Europe in 1815, never, we may hope, to be thrown 
down from its high seat. 

Thus the great range has never been a boundary in the strict sense of 
delimiting two nations which came up to either of its great lines of water 
parting. If we examine the Alps today we find them as an ideal boundary 
only between France and Italy. Switzerland occupies the central heights 
without unity of race or language. It thrusts a tongue southward among 
the Italian lakes without a shadow of geographic reason and projects into 
French territory past Lake Geneva in equally arbitrary fashion. In like 
manner it cuts off the upper waters of the Rhine and joins Austria along 
a meaningless frontier. Lyde avers that it is “too strong by natural fea¬ 
tures and human type for any of its neighbors to be permanently dangerous 
to it.” 10 One may question this assurance and may well doubt whether 


8 D. W. Freshfield: The Great Passes of the Western and Central Alps, Geogr. Joum., Vol. 49, 1917, 
pp, 2-26; reference on p. 5. 

9 Leon Dominian: The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, New York, 1917, p. 333. 

10 Article cited in footnote 1, p. 134. 



PRINCIPLES IN BOUNDARY MAKING 


211 


the considerations cited fully explain the German failure to cross Swiss 
territory. At all events Switzerland for a short section of the Alps fills 
the role of a buffer state. The Italian struggle with Austria will result in 
making the great mountain arc more nearly a precise boundary than it 
ever has been in the course of European history. 

The English Channel and the North Sea 

One might hold, with large show of reason, that the English Channel 
has been the most effective of all historic boundaries. It has undergone the 
test of centuries, and the island kingdom stands forth needing no argu¬ 
ment. Before we pass to particulars, we may summarize our conclusion by 
asking if there would have been immunity from invasion in all modern 
times if we could imagine an interchange of population types between Great 
Britain (in the strict meaning of the term) and Ireland. In this manner we 
inquire concerning the relative protective value of the national spirit and 
the geographic situation. We shall make no pretense to a quantitative 
answer, for here comes in geographic influence, which has no doubt had its 
share in molding the nations to defensive strength. 

The English Channel and the North Sea (the latter hardly now to be 
called the German Ocean) did not prevent the Romans from invading and 
organizing the larger part of the greater island. They were ineffective 
barriers for centuries against the thieving pirates and tough-handed immi¬ 
grants who rocked across the waters from the German coast lands, from 
Jutland, and from the Norwegian fiords, to become the heralded ancestors 
of Englishmen and New Englishmen. England was successfully invaded 
in 1066 but never since that remote time. Here we seem to belie our obser¬ 
vation that boundaries were specially efficient in primitive days. 

Let us come back to the power of environment and, using Lyde’s phrase, 
recognize in the British water frontier a ‘ ‘ racial agent, ’ ’ a force or, better, 
a condition, which helped to make and weld and develop a people, truly a 
world power. Here were a climate, a soil, a fishing zone, an outfit of min¬ 
erals, and a defensive water barrier, which encouraged and protected de¬ 
velopment. Being in the realm of human geography, with emphasis on the 
human, we put with environment a fortunate gathering of the raw material 
of civilization, the marauding Angle, Saxon, Dane, and Viking, Teutonic 
if we must admit it, but as far today from the Teutonic evolution of the 
Continent as if the Straits of Dover were the Atlantic Ocean. 

Here have grown industry, invention, national unity, and the love and 
power of liberty. As a sea barrier has promoted these ends it may be said 
to have been efficient in defense; however it be, the kingdom has stood free 
from the foul clutch of the invader for eight hundred and fifty years be¬ 
cause in defensive power, centering in the human spirit, she has more than 
stood even with any power of aggression. 

Our conclusion thus far is that defensive boundaries, as observed in his- 


212 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


tory and as seen in a regional survey of the world today, are few, even in 
the most highly differentiated regions of all, the continent of Europe. And 
the few boundaries of distinct efficiency show such limitations that we have 
no warrant for reliance on them in present settlements or for future gen¬ 
erations. 


Human Factors in Boundary Making 

Race 

Emphasis lies today on the human factors in boundary making. The 
word “race” has been much used in this field but deserves to be discarded. 
All the great nations and many of the smaller are composite in origin, and 
it is the nation—not the race—that is looking for ring fences. The German 
may be Teuton, Slav, or Alpine ; long head, round head, brunet, or blond; 
he is a member, for boundary purposes, not of a race, but of a nation. 
South Germany has been deemed by good authority to be less Teutonic than 
eastern France. 

Language 

Nor is language a criterion for the boundary maker. Professor Spenser 
Wilkinson, in discussing Lyde’s paper on boundaries before the Royal Geo¬ 
graphical Society, recalled a Greek lady who, in the course of a day’s travel 
in the Balkans, denied that Bulgarian speech necessarily made the speaker 
Bulgarian. Greeks some of them were in all but speech—“the test of 
nationality is the will of each. ’ ’ Nationality is the criterion, and men may 
elect their nationality just as they choose the town they will live in and the 
business they will pursue. Belgium, bilingual; Switzerland, quadrilingual; 
and Alsace-Lorraine, with French sympathy and German speech, are ex¬ 
amples which in these days need but to be named. 

Nationality 

Nationality means unity of ideal, derived chiefly from hereditary experi¬ 
ence or from geographical environment or more often perhaps from both 
combined. It is the group which wishes to live and act together and to 
have a common government, embodying its purpose and its emotion in the 
word patriotism. National feeling is tied up with primitive heroism, or 
the sage wisdom of the fathers, which preserved the group from destruc¬ 
tion ; it embodies itself in song and folklore. These heritages gather about 
sacred pieces of ground, the altar spots of the homeland, and they build 
themselves into constitutions and laws, into literature, into social customs, 
distinctive dress, and forms of art. With these cherished things go too 
often an unreasoning isolation and an absurd and dangerous repugnance 
to the foreigner and his ways. “The men who compose a single nation 
must think together.” “Belgium is fathomed in their hearts.” “Serbia 
extends as far as her folk songs are heard.” Thus, with poetic feeling, 


PRINCIPLES IN BOUNDARY MAKING 


213 


does Dominian compress into terse sentences the essence of nationality. A 
nation, then, is a group loving its own soil, devoted to its ways of living, 
proud of its history, sure of its destiny. A home, a life, and the will to 
live and to die if need be in order to preserve them—such is nationality. 

Expansion of Prolific Peoples 

Nations grow, and in the expansion of prolific peoples the boundary 
maker meets his most stubborn problem. It has been solved by force; but 
the world that is, and that is to be, will not willingly meet the question 
in that way. Human distribution follows to a degree the analogies of 
biology. Men spread like oysters, chestnuts, fishes, and birds, into environ¬ 
ments that favor comfort and perpetuate their kind. The principles of 
migration, struggle, and adjustment find application in human history. 
Human groups cannot be put into tight compartments any more success¬ 
fully than can other creatures. The great northern forest of North 
America projects a peninsula of its own species far south on the crest of 
the Appalachians. The Pacific Coast forest has a great enclave among the 
typical forests of the Canadian Rockies, and all types of forest shade into 
one another. Such is the distribution of all faunas and floras, fossil and 
living. So much is to be said for man in his relation to other living 
things; we inherit an evolutionary condition. Must we therefore apply 
the law of the jungle to civilization ? A great nation, basing its science, as 
it based its history, its philosophy, and its religion, on its desires, decided 
that war is a “biological necessity.” It fought to get room for increasing 
numbers. Even Sir Thomas Holdich admits that boundaries are violated 
by an “irrepressible demand for more space for an expanding people.” 11 
Can the world admit this procedure? We recognize it in the case of small 
or primitive populations, as in early America, but what are its limitations 
among civilized peoples? Must a high birth rate be regarded as giving 
title to a neighbor’s estates? Again Holdich refers to the “right of 
expansion” to meet the imperious demand of multiplying people as pro¬ 
motive of dispute and war as long as the world lasts. This surely is a 
hard saying. We cannot indeed expect to regulate population output by 
an international convention, but perhaps we can regulate international 
conduct for peoples who convert their domain into a human stock farm. 
Even Dominian allows that the Drang nach Osten is inevitable, because 
the East is thinly populated and fertile. But this does not answer the 
question whether the penetration should be imperial and militaristic, or 
individual and peaceful. If the world is to exist, and if invention is not 
to proceed to the self-destruction of the race, we must find peaceful ways 
of caring for growing populations. We cannot pull up line fences while 
our neighbors sleep and then kill them for resisting in the morning. No 
writer has put this imperative of the future better than Professor Lyde. 


11 Article cited in footnote 3. 




214 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


“The natural growth of the national unit justifies geographical expansion 
only in primitive times and places. Even so, as all empty spaces must 
some day be fully occupied, territorial expansion is only a temporary means 
of shirking obligations. Certainly in a mature civilization natural growth 
can be legitimately met only by intensive, not by extensive development— 
at all events inside that area of mature civilization.” 12 

Expansion Through Greed and Ambition 

Economic greed and dynastic ambition have used the common human 
passion for bigness as an argument for territorial expansion. Let us 
conquer and add territory. We need rich colonial possessions that we may 
have raw materials and enlarge our markets. It is for the economist to 
formulate the answer, and it would be significant in boundary determina¬ 
tions. As recognized by more and more of the world at this time, the 
true end of nations and governinents is the well-being of the individual. 
Is the economic position of a small nation in a decent world worse than 
that of a great nation? And does the individual man, or the special 
industry, have as good a chance in a small as in a large nation? If there 
is, or can be, equal opportunity to realize the true ends of life, a strong 
motive for tearing up boundaries is put to rest. 

We do not attempt the answer. We may, however, observe that the 
Swiss seem as happy and prosperous, by all decent standards, as British, 
French, or Americans. The quality of loyalty is not set by the bigness of 
one’s country, father in the love of its institutions, devotion to its physical 
associations, pride in its achievements, and satisfaction in the comfort and 
opportunity which it offers. It may be, after all, that the meek shall inherit 
the earth—a German today may well envy a Dane or even a Cuban. 

Losses by Emigration 

Here belongs the alleged loss of the emigrant who goes out from the 
homeland and naturalizes himself under another flag. Out of this view 
which regards alienation as a subtraction from the legitimate resources of 
a nation, arise propaganda, espionage, mental reservation, double allegiance, 
that ugly brood of policies devised to build up Deutschtum in America, 
colonies in South America, and extension of dominion everywhere. Which 
would have been a greater boon to Germany—a large body of emigrants 
becoming loyal Brazilian citizens, retaining kindly memories of the Father- 
land, and fostering friendly trade; or a collection of aliens maintaining a 
solid block of language, drilling at arms and plotting to put a blotch of 
German color on the map of the southern continent? Britons have gone 
to the United States, to Canada, to Australia, to South Africa, with 
godspeeds and no grudging, with consequences to the motherland now 
self-revealed and glorious. A seed of personality, of industry, thrift, and 


12 L. W. Lyde: Some Frontiers of Tomorrow, London, 1915, p. 12. 



PRINCIPLES IN BOUNDARY MAKING 


215 


liberty blown on the wind of chance and rooted in the farthest corner of 
the world does not make the home country poor. When the world learns 
the lesson of mutuality it will have cleared the worst tangles in its 
boundary problems. 

Boundaries for Economic Equilibrium 

There is a school of writers who base their conclusions on a so-called 
economic interpretation of history and call for countries outlined as 
natural economic units having a considerable degree of self-sufficiency in 
resources and trade opportunities. In their view small nations do not 
much count if they stand in the way of big neighbors. Mr. Simon N. 
Patten, of the University of Pennsylvania, is an apostle of this doctrine. 
His views of the “unnatural boundaries of European states” and of a 
scheme of reconstruction can best be told in his own language, which 
even in excerpts appears to do him no injustice. -“Old tradition persists, 
and ideas of political freedom based on former conditions demand small 
states. Economic progress, however, makes larger states inevitable now 
that the world’s resources are to be exploited in more effective ways.” We 
are forced to conclude that former conditions, home, traditions, constitu¬ 
tions, customs, patriotism, count for nothing and that man ought to live 
by bread alone. * ‘ Germans sacrifice so much for their country because they 
see an even more degraded Germany looming up as a result of defeat.” 
“Germany is admittedly in a position where her present boundaries act 
as a hindrance to her industrial development and a bar to her social 
progress. Her natural seaports are in Holland and Belgium.” “Shall 
race feeling or economic interest dictate the formation of boundaries?” 
“Germany suffers a similar wrong when she is kept from the North Sea 
and a permanent commercial union with Holland and North Belgium.” 
“The masses of the people would grow more contented as their pros¬ 
perity and security were assured, and would soon become callous to those 
reactionary appeals to the emotions that now make so much trouble for 
the world.” “Scientific boundaries could easily be arranged that would 
bind together the people within them and make these inhabitants generous 
and sympathetic to those outside of them. Moreover such zone boundaries 
are easy to draw in Europe, as the natural features that fix them are so 
pronounced.” “Belgium is an artificial state created out of the whole 
cloth with no regard to social or economic consideration. Only*a false 
enthusiasm for small political units gives any ground for its continua¬ 
tion. ” 13 Of the above sentiments, a geographer has only this to say: that 
they represent an alleged principle of boundary making; that social 
philosophers have missed the recipe for making men good and contented; 
and that further criticism either from the social or the geographic point 
of view is unnecessary. 


13 Unnatural Boundaries of European States. Survey, Vol. 34.1915, pp. 24-32. 



216 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


Present problems are an inheritance from the migrations, expansion, 
and conquests of the historic past, and the new map cannot be beaten into 
conformity with abstract theories. Making up countries by rule is as 
impracticable as any radical socialist program for individual prosperity. 


Specific Problems of Europe 

It is not within the scope of this article to discuss, beyond bare refer¬ 
ence, the new map of Europe. Map makers, however, must take account 
of the principles which we have attempted to place in order. Certain 
applications of these principles may be briefly examined. The author has 
made it clear that with certain reservations he is more in sympathy with 
the Lyde type of doctrine than with that so ably urged by Holdich. 
With modern appliances for aggression, the world must put its faith in 
the decent behavior of nations; but the nations must for a time, and per¬ 
haps for a long time, be prepared to supplement this faith by co-operative 
militant action. It is pessimistic and unthinkable to settle down to the 
Prussian principle of world order. 

France 

The simplest survey of the map of France shows the futility of the ring 
fence as a safeguard of her liberty. She is bordered by four seas and 
cannot defend herself, unassociated, from any pirate navy that is per¬ 
mitted to roam them. It is no violent hypothesis that Swiss neutrality 
should have been violated and that Italy should have been forced into 
military co-operation as a member of the Triple Alliance. In the light of 
such possibilities examine the French east front. The Belgian plain, pro¬ 
tected by treaty and by the forts of Liege, have their own story. The 
Verdun gap was held by the blood of Frenchmen. There would still have 
been open the Belfort gap, the Geneva-Rhone route, the passes of the 
Savoyan Alps, and the coast gate of the Riviera. It is idle to talk of the 
Ardennes, the Vosges, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the sea as protecting 
France. One of the most eminent of French geographers has said, speaking 
of the land border, that his country was “encircled but not imprisoned.” 
He might have said “surrounded but not protected.” 

Poland 

Even worse is the barrier theory for the new Poland. This unhappy 
country appears on the map at least as early as the time of the First 
Crusade, bordered by Pomerania, Bohemia, Hungary, and Russia. Then 
the Carpathians were its southern boundary. Similar was the status two 
centuries later with even longer frontage on the Carpathians. There was 
vast extension in the sixteenth century when Poland came to the Baltic 
between Pomerania and the Teutonic Order, including in the south the 


PRINCIPLES IN BOUNDARY MAKING 


217 


present Galicia. Succeeding centuries saw wide conquest and withdrawal 
on the vague plains of the east, until the consummation of the great inter¬ 
national spoliation of 1795. Could Poland have saved herself if she had 
had good geographic barriers? The answer lies in the Romanoff, Haps- 
burg, and Hohenzollern dynasties. No physical features can make him safe 
who dwells among thieves. Can scientific boundaries be drawn now to 
protect the suffering millions of Poland ? Let the schoolboy and the reader 
of the newspaper war map answer. 

Coastal Veneers of the Baltic and the Near East 
We cite one further class of examples and attempt to apply the barrier 
theory. Mackinder in his own vivid manner has described the coastal 
veneers of the Baltic, the Adriatic, and the- Aegean Seas. On the Baltic 
is a veneer of Germans in East Prussia backed by a hinterland of Poles. 
On the Adriatic is a veneer of Italians fronting the solid mass of Yugo¬ 
slavs and offering one of the toughest problems of the settlement soon to 
be made. At Saloniki are Greeks, and in the valleys that lead down to the 
Aegean border are Bulgarians. Similar is the distribution of Greek and 
Turk east of the Aegean. Such are the tests by which the barrier theory is 
met, and in these tests it is found wanting. We are thrown back upon the 
will, upon mutual concessions, upon assimilation, favored by democratic 
governments, and no doubt upon a residuum of physical restraint exercised 
upon those who disdain moral control. We gather our conclusions in the 
following paragraphs. 


Conclusions 

The present arrangement of human groups is a heritage from long- 
existing biological conditions of dispersal, migration, and intermingling, 
complicated by the vagaries of the human will, as seen in lust of conquest, 
love of war, dynastic ambitions, and economic greed. 

The necessity of boundary lines has come with the filling of the world’s 
spaces, the pressure of population on resources, and the lifting and widen¬ 
ing of the material standards of living. 

We hold with Lyde that civilization is “progress in the art of living 
together.” Any nation is partial and backward in civilization in propor¬ 
tion as its standards of international dealing fall below its laws of intra¬ 
national conduct. 

We do not accept Holdich’s virtual admission that international ethics 
are permanently so low that defensive boundaries will always be essential to 
reasonable safety against attack. 

On the other hand we are not convinced that boundaries should be 
deliberately and always placed where people meet. We would not avoid 
such lines if the greater justice to the greater number on both sides of the 
proposed fence seems to require them. We might for the present give 


218 


THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW 


questionable or quarrelsome neighbors as high a fence as is practicable, as 
we try to keep the weak of all sorts from overpressing temptation. 

Approximately twenty-five human groups in Europe show such unity 
of purpose and ideal, such community of interest, of history, and of hopes, 
and each in such reasonable numbers, that they have embarked or deserve 
to embark on a career of nationality. 

The world is now pretty well agreed that ruling houses are obsolete, that 
the interests of great powers are no more valid than those of small powers, 
and that economic equilibrium or self-sufficiency in natural resources does 
not outweigh the rights and desires of any truly national group. 

Europe has an exceptional number of physical units which in primitive 
days could serve as the cradles of nations. In the advanced conditions and 
high densities of today, however, the number of physical compartments 
falls far short of the number of groups which properly wish independence. 

Modern appliances for war have impaired the security once gained 
through physical barriers. Heights of land and all kinds of waters give 
important aid in war, but they do not fend off war. We cannot “ destroy 
the germs of frontier dispute by drawing physical boundaries. ’ ’ 

We must draw boundaries on defensible or separating lines if possible 
but at all events in such a way as to work substantial justice. 

Here is the sphere of a league of nations, embodying the will of all mature 
civilization that imperfectly civilized groups shall no longer make biological 
inferences or blasphemous conceptions of divine destiny the excuse for per¬ 
petuating tooth-and-claw methods in the relations of peoples. 


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